Can China Fix Central Asia's Soviet Rail Legacy?

The Soviet railways system spun outward like a web from Moscow. Thousands of kilometers of broad-gauge tracks were laid in Central Asia during the Soviet period and later inherited by the newly independent states of the region. But the system was designed to serve the Russian homeland; independent Central Asia, while remaining solidly within Moscow’s sphere, has interests of its own to the east.

Modern projects – largely funded by and intended to benefit China – are in the works but progress has been uneven.By 1936, the Soviet Union had finished shifting the borders and composition of the Central Asian republics. With the inclusion of the former Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast into the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936, the modern map of the region took shape. The administrative divisions between the republics were not mirrored by the region’s railways. The Soviet Ministry of Railways operated regionally using four bureaus: the Alma-Ata Railway, Tselinnaya Railway, West-Kazakhstan Railway, and the Central Asian Railway. The first three covered Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan and the latter the rest of the region.